Why you should be drinking orange wine

"Либо напиши что-нибудь стоящее, либо делай что-нибудь, о чем стоит написать." Бенджамин Франклин

Why you should be drinking orange wine

Orange wine

Kay Jordan/ImageBrief.com

A handful of London’s coolest restaurants (Temper, Toasted and Portland included) currently have a separate section – admittedly small – devoted to orange wine, but expect it to expand a hundred-fold over the next decade.

So what is orange wine? It’s white wine made like a red wine. Why do this? To create a wholly more sensual white-wine experience by utilising the skins of the grapes, during fermentation, as one would red grapes. Red grapes are kept in contact with their skins for two or three weeks. That’s how red wines get their colour. With white or, more accurately, golden wine, skin-contact may be as little as a few hours. Each orange wine tastes different depending on grape variety and method of manufacture, but all have a greater depth and richness than normal white wines.

A Sauvignon Blanc, for example, which has spent two months on its skins results in a Sauvignon as if made on another planet. The perfume is spicy and rich, and in the mouth there’s an abundance of fruity and nutty layers, apple and aniseed. An example is Sauvignon Blanc 2014 from Vinos Ambiz (otrosvinos.co.uk), which will soon appear on restaurant wine lists (at around £40 is my guess). Even more stunning is the Chardonnay 2013 from Movia, a Slovenian producer. This has had nine months in contact with its grape skins and the result is elegance and bite, sensual from nose to throat.

Does orange wine sound too weird to be lovable? Well, look up Raeburn Fine Wines of Edinburgh. It has a dozen orange wines on offer. The sassiest names to search for are Gravner and Radikon, both from north-east Italy. Or you can visit the Passione Vino shop in Shoreditch and try the Krimiso 2015, a five-months-on-the-lees example. It’s the most delicious orange wine I’ve tasted. This is because Sicilian maker Aldo Viola hardly interferes as the wine transforms its Catarratto grapes into a dry nectar with a marvellous plum- and tomato-skin fruitiness. Enjoy a bottle in the bar (at £39) or buy one off the shelf (at £27). There is something shocking about orange wine, I can’t deny it. But Signor Viola’s example makes one revise one’s idea of what wine is about.

This feature first appeared in Condé Nast Traveller July/August 2017

Cocktails of the future… are hangover-free